French director Pascal Laugier got an international reputation for his film Martyrs, which was the ne plus ultra of torture porn films, a movie that found a weird salvation in a devastatingly a tormented character. Laugier’s follow-up has been a long time coming, thanks in part to a flirtation with the Hellraiser remake.

After rolling out to some festivals, his new film The Tall Man is ready to hit US shores, and we’ve got an early look at the film thanks to a French trailer. This is a very different film from Martyrs, as it casts Jessica Biel in a much softer thriller that has vague echoes of Silent Hill. There’s a small town, an old evil, and even Jodelle Ferland, who played a key role in the original Silent Hill film. The film has faced middling reviews at festivals, and not just because it isn’t as crazy as Martyrs. But we can hope that it might have been tightened up just a bit before the wide release.

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Macaulay Culkin’s career may not be what it once was, but the franchise that shot him to fame apparently lives on. ABC Family has just announced the start of production on Home Alone 5: Alone in the Dark, which will premiere on TV later this year as part of the network’s “25 Days of Christmas” programming block. And before you even ask, no, Culkin, Joe Pesci, and Daniel Stern aren’t involved — but Edward Asner, Debi Mazar, Eddie Steeples, Malcolm McDowell, and the guy who directed Garfield are. More details after the jump.

Zoe Saldana is in talks to join Mark Ruffalo in Infinitely Polar Bear, the directorial debut of screenwriter Maya Forbes. The drama follows a bipolar man (Ruffalo) and his long-suffering wife (Saldana). When the husband goes off his meds, he finds his life deteriorating along with his psychological condition. As he loses his job and his mind, his wife returns to work and then eventually moves out, leaving him to take care of their children.

The film is being produced by J.J. Abrams, who previously worked with Saldana on Star Trek, and financed by Megan Ellison, who executive produced True Grit. Shooting for Infinitely Polar Bear will take place in September, just before Saldana is scheduled to reprise her role as Uhura in the Star Trek sequel. [Vulture]

After the jump, Xavier Samuel and Myles Pollard board Drift, and ParaNorman adds to its voice cast.

Briefly: Sadly, The Tall Man is not the name of a sequel to Phantasm being directed by Martyrs director Pascal Laugier. It is the name of Laugier’s next film, which already counted Jessical Biel as the lead. Now the film, a suspense thriller, also boasts Jodelle Ferland (Eclipse, Tideland) and a handful of other actors. Bloody Disgusting reports that in addition to Ferland, the film has added Teach Grant (The Dead Zone), William B. Davis (The X-Files), and Samantha Ferris (Supernatural) to the cast.

We don’t know much about the film, though I expect it won’t be as relentlessly and graphically brutal as Martyrs. B-D calls the film a “long time dream project” of the director’s, and also says that it in the vein of early M. Night Shyamalan films. So: dark, brooding, quiet. Hopefully not so reliant upon a twist. Plotwise, we just have that Jessica Biel plays ” a woman who must grapple with and track the mysterious figure of The Tall Man who has kidnapped her child.”

If the trailer for Case 39 looks like a time capsule, that’s because it is. The film was shot in 2006, at a point when it looked more weird to see Bradley Cooper in a leading role, and less weird to see Renee Zellweger onscreen at all. Now the film is finally close to being released, on October 10, and so there’s an all-new trailer for the rather old film. Read More »

It has now been almost three years since Case 39 went into production. That’s some delay and seeing as the best information we have on a release date simply indicates a vague 2010 (I’m told that you shouldn’t believe the September ’09 you will see in some places) I’m surprised to see a trailer online at all but one has turned up unofficially within the last hour on YouTube.

To get you ready for the trailer – embedded after the break – here’s the official synopsis from the placeholder page now constituting an official site:

…a horror film starring Renée Zellweger as family services social worker Emily Jenkins. Emily thinks she has seen it all until she meets her newest, most mysterious case, troubled 10-year old Lilith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland). Emily’s worst fears are confirmed when the parents try to kill Lilith, their only daughter. Emily saves her and decides to take her in herself until the right foster family comes along. Then the real horror begins…